Pharmaceutical Selling Skills: Chapter 2 - Pre-Call Planning

Imagine you are hired as a sales representative with a pharmaceutical company.On your first day on territory the company has not yet given you a list of physicians and pharmacists to call on, no addresses or phone numbers or instructions.Do you think you would be very effective as a sales representative?You eventually would figure out who to call on and where they are located through trial and error, but this would be a very ineffective and time consuming way of doing things.

Although this is an extreme example, the same thing occurs when representatives do not properly prepare before calling on target customers.It is essential to know where your customer is in the sales cycle and then plan how to move them closer to the decision stage in favor of your product. The reasons for pre-call planning very clear:

1.No plan = no result

2.Maximizes use of limited face to face sales time

3.Adds value on every call

4.Prevents surprises

5.Speeds up the time to get a sale

Reviewing previous call notes, analyzing data that is available, reviewing the types of questions that the physician has asked in the past and ensuring that you are following-up on any requests made are areas that should be reviewed prior to a sales call.At this point you should build a call plan using the information at hand to ensure that you are moving the business forward.Ask yourself:

·What are you trying to achieve during this call?

·Why are you in front of the customer?

·What value are you trying to bring to the customer?

Although this is a crucial step in achieving success, many representatives neglect to complete this on a regular basis.

No plan = No Result

Often, sales representatives walk out of a sales call, and when asked – “So, did you achieve what you set out to do?” they cannot really answer. This is because they did not have a plan in place to measure their sales call performance against.Not only is this ineffective, it prevents sales representatives from effectively gaining a close from a customer.If you do not know what you are trying to achieve, you will not know how to close a physician to gain a sale.

Maximize the use of limited face to face selling time

As the average sales call in the pharmaceutical sales industry has been estimated to be two to three minutes, managers are often asked by representatives:“how can I be effective in such a short amount of time?”The answer is pre-call planning.Without it, there is no way that you will be effective in those two to three minutes.The best representatives are the ones who, because of pre-call planning, can very quickly focus their customer and are able to turn these short calls into longer ones as a result of their pre-call planning.

Add value on every call

Nothing annoys a physician more than a representative who comes into a call and asks the same old questions, presents the same old information over and over, and does not bring any value to the call.This leads to restricted access with that physician and makes it much more difficult to move the business forward. The goal of a sales representative is to increase sales.Through regular pre-call planning you will ensure that you achieve this goal quicker than if you walk into your calls ill-prepared.

Prevents Surprises

During sales calls with customers, healthcare sales representatives are sometimes caught off-guard by a statement or question from a physician.After the call is done, they go to their car and wonder why they could not answer it and why it took them off guard.The best representatives at this stage take note of the situation (by making written customer call notes) and make sure they review it again prior to making their next sales call on that customer.The less effective sales representatives just make a mental note of it and continue on to their next sales call.In the latter case, the less effective representative goes to call on the physician a couple of months later, and, because he did not review the call notes from the last call (because he did not make any), he gets surprised for a second time.The result is a loss of credibility in the eyes of that physician.To prevent these surprises form occurring over and over again, pre-call planning should be done on each and every sales call.

Speed up the time to get a sale

The best way to visualize this is to imagine a series of four steps.When you reach the top step, you have gained a sale.Effective pre-call planning can be viewed as allowing you to climb the steps more quickly.

Imagine on your first sales call with a customer, you get him to the first step (Call 1).A couple of months later, you call on that same physician again (Call 2).Without pre-call planning, you may end up covering all of the same information that you covered in your first call.Because of the limited amount of time with the customer, and the fact you have just repeated the first call information without knowing it, you still have the customer with one foot on the first step and one on the second step.On the next sales call a little while later (Call 3), you still do not pre-call plan, so you re-cover some information in Call 1 and Call 2, and now the customer is MAYBE just on step 2.This continues up to Call 4 without doing the pre-call planning.If you continue to present the same information over and over, and do not pre-call plan prior to making your sales calls, the right side of the figure is what will happen.It will take you much longer to get your customer to the prescription step.

With effective pre-call planning, after the first call, call notes are entered.Prior to the second call a couple of months later, the effective representative reviews the call notes, and figures out where that customer was at when Call 1 was finished.When sales call 2 occurs with the physician, a very small amount of time is spent reiterating any last call agreements made from Call 1 and then moves on to new information which reinforces the hot buttons found in Call 1.As a result, by the end of Call 2, the physician now has two feet firmly planted on the second step.After Call 2, the effective representative makes call notes and again reviews them prior to Call 3, so that by the end of it, the physician now has both feet firmly planted on the third step.As you can see, pre-call planning is a necessity to moving your customers to a favorable decision on your product more quickly.

When planning your sales call you need to prepare for the type of customer that you will be dealing with.Are they a technical customer who likes data and clinical studies?Do they dislike reviewing clinical studies and find the charts and graphs in the visual aid more valuable?The type of customer you are dealing with will help to determine which sales tools you will use during the call.Having these sales tools close at hand, so as to not waste time searching for them, will help you to make the most of your time during the call.

The previous call notes should give you an idea of the customer needs.Have the needs changed over time?Are these the true needs or do you need to ask more in-depth probing questions to uncover hidden needs?Is there anything another representative in your team has uncovered since you have last visited this customer?These are all questions to consider when planning for this call.

Next, consider the time allotment with this customer.If it is a scheduled call that normally lasts five minutes, then plan for a five minute sales call. However, in many situations the length of the call could change.For example, a physician may be running late (not unusual) and the five minutes you thought you had is now two minutes.You had better be prepared to quickly adapt your call plan to meet the two minute timeframe (hence why versatility is a key skill which successful healthcare sales representatives have). Conversely, if you normally get two minutes with this physician and their last patient did not show up, they may invite you into their office and give you seven minutes.In this situation you need to be prepared to make full use of the seven minutes even though you expected only two minutes.The moral of this story is when dealing with physicians always be prepared for anything!

Another step in the pre-call planning process is to have some probing questions prepared to ask during the sales call.Too often, representatives go into the call without having thought of strong questions to ask and instead they ask what we call “throw-away” questions.These are questions which give you no information of value.A good example is “how is product X working for you today?”This will give you a response of “good” 99% of the time and will leave you wondering where to go next.By having a few well thought out questions prepared ahead of time you will be able to gather more information on the call and move the business forward.Review questions that have been asked in the past to ensure you recognize any issues your customer may have with your product or service.Quite often there is a pattern to the objections that a customer has and it is your job to do some homework and find answers that will ensure the customer is comfortable using your product or service.

The objective of the sales call should also be determined beforehand.When closing the physician, what type of commitment are you going to ask for?You should always have a couple of objectives planned in case the first one does not pan out.A primary objective is the best case scenario.If all goes according to plan – what commitment are you going to ask from the physician?When considering setting objectives, you should keep the S.M.A.R.T. acronym in mind:

S – Specific – are your objectives specific and not vague?You should be very clear as to what you are asking your customer to do.It should not be vague.

M – Measurable – can you measure whether or not you achieved your objectives? If your objective is not measurable, how will you know if you have achieved it?

A – Action Oriented – Does the customer have to take some sort of action?Common action words to consider in setting call objectives include read, write, agree, attend, etc.

R – Realistic – Have you set realistic goals?Asking the customer to use only your products on your first meeting may not be very realistic.This is a very common cause of frustration from a representative standpoint.Often objectives are not realistically set and when the representative tries to close, he has a hard time. Make sure your call objectives are realistic!

T – Timelines – Have you set a specific time for the actions to be completed?A customer may say they will use your product but if there is no time frame set they may not use it for a year while you were expecting them to use it next week.

If you set S.M.A.R.T. call objectives before you speak with each customer, you can be assured that you will have a better chance of moving the business forward and increasing your sales.Your call objectives do not always have to have every aspect of this acronym, but keeping it in mind will help you to develop stronger objectives for your sales calls.

That being said, sales calls do not always go as planned.Therefore, in addition to setting primary call objectives, you also need to set secondary ones.A secondary call objective is one which is similar to a primary, but asks the customer for a lesser commitment.A good way to come up with a secondary objective is to review your primary one and then ask yourself – “What if the customer says NO to the primary objective?”If the customer is not willing to concede to the primary objective, effective healthcare sales representatives often have a secondary objective ready.You must move the business forward on each and every call and a having a secondary objective will help you to do this.

Here are some examples of some possible primary and secondary objectives:

Primary:To get the physician to agree that my product offers advantages for his Type II diabetic patients over product X.

Secondary: (if he says NO) To get the physician to read a clinical paper which highlights the advantages of my product over product X for his Type II diabetic patients before my next sales call.

Primary:To get the physician to prescribe my product as his first choice in his hypertensive patients.

Secondary: To get the physician to prescribe my product in patient who do not respond well to his current first choice product for his hypertensive patients.

Primary:To get the physician to attend our symposia with Dr. Jones on September 12th.

Secondary: To get the physician to agree to read the clinical paper published by Dr. Jones before my next sales call.

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